This invention relates to wireless telephone, and has particular relation to automatically determining the proper origination scheme for a call being placed from a wireless telephone.
In a landline telephone system, a telephone call is a telephone call. If the call goes through, it goes through. If it doesn""t, the user calls again later.
Moreover, the network or service provider of a landline phone makes no attempt to optimize the system to further increase the probability that a call origination will go through.
Some devices have automatic redial. If a sending fax machine calls a receiving fax machine, and the receiving fax machine is busy, the sending fax machine tries again, at progressively longer intervals, until the call goes through or a predetermined maximum number of attempts is reached. A home computer attempting to reach an Internet Service Provider will make similarly repeated attempts if it does not get through the first time. Further flexibility is not possible in a landline telephone system. A telephone call is a telephone call.
Applicant has noted that, in a wireless telephone system, not all telephone calls are the same, and not all networks are the same. For example, some networks have Code Division Multiple Access (xe2x80x9cCDMAxe2x80x9d) and Advanced Mobile Phone System (xe2x80x9cAMPSxe2x80x9d) systems capabilities while other networks have only CDMA systems. In addition, a network might be more or less likely to return a specific call origination failure indications, such as a REORDER or INTERCEPT, in comparison to a different network. Furthermore, distinct networks will usually also vary in the origination failure indication time period, that is, the time period from the call origination start time to when the mobile receives an origination failure indication from the network.
Another variable that has to be accounted for is the call type. For example, while a regular call might be silently re-dialed a maximum of 4 times within 30 seconds, an emergency 911 call needs to be re-dialed endlessly until call is successfully connected (or battery is empty).
In order to optimize the origination schemes of different call types, a call plan is associated with each such call type. A call type is simply a subset of dial-strings that are grouped together and associated with a particular predefined call type. Example of predefined call types are voice, Emergency, Data, Fax, Packet, OTASP (Over The Air Service Provisioning), Test (Markov, Loopback), and SMS (Short Message Service).
With each such call type there is associated a set of dial strings. For example, the dial-string subset {xe2x80x9c911xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9c*911xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9c#911xe2x80x9d} might be associated with the emergency call type. In other words, any dial string that is within this set will be considered of type xe2x80x9cemergencyxe2x80x9d while dial strings that are not within this set are not considered of type xe2x80x9cemergencyxe2x80x9d.
Different wireless service providers are available to the user of a wireless telephone. These providers offer different services, with different prices, to the wireless telephone user, and these services and prices depend on the telephone number being called. The user of a wireless telephone can thus customize a call origination scheme based on the telephone number (or at least the type of telephone number) being called. A xe2x80x9ccall origination schemexe2x80x9d is a decision as to how many times to attempt to redial, which service provider to use, which (Code Division Multiple Access vs. Frequency Division Multiple Access, for example) of service to use, etc.
Table 1 shows a preferred Origination Plan Table. As shown in Table 1, each entry of the call origination plan table associates a call-type and/or a dial-string with a call origination plan. The call-origination plan holds all the information that is necessary to conduct the origination process for the associated call-type and/or dial-string.
Table 2 is an explanation of the fields shown in Table 1.
Table 3 is an Origination Plan Table Example. Note that the table is being searched from top to bottom. In the case where a particular call-type/dial-string can be matched against more than one table entry, the first entry from the top will dictate the origination plan.
The origination plan can be specified using a table or a set of tables, as illustrated below. In such a table, each entry specifies the origination plan variables that are associated with a particular call type. Alternatively, the origination plan variables can replaced with a script (see FIG. 3).